


Scordatura

by ofvanity



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Domestic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Painting, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofvanity/pseuds/ofvanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Kiev, winter dawns over a shaking horizon and Eames sleeps through an earthquake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Do you ever dream?” Eames asks, breath ghosting smoke over Robert’s shoulders.  
  
Robert glances back at him, red lips quirked in a frown, “Don’t you?”  
  
-  
  
“Do you ever wish things were different?” Robert says abruptly and tips the champagne flute back. It doesn’t even have liquor in it, it is orange juice from the bodega down the street, the same place that is starting to become too familiar. They’ll have to move on soon.  
  
“Of course I do,” Eames replies, setting the paintbrush down, and thinks about Toronto for next month, ”Not all the time, though. Not everything.”  
  
Robert’s hair is mussed with acrylic paints drying at the base and his eyes are insect black. He tips his chin forward in a shiver when Eames touches the base of his skull with a small rasp of fingernails. “Like what?” Robert asks, voice thick and hushed.  
  
Eames presses his wet lips to the dry spirals of black and white sprawling across Robert’s shoulders. “There are some things I’d like to keep. Like knowing what you look like silhouetted by the Kyoto skyline. Like watching you strum guitars and cellos in the middle of the night,” Eames traces the arc of an unidentifiable smoke figure, the lines are all essentially meaningless.  
  
“Like brushing my paints all over you, like how you shiver when you first step out of the shower. Like,” Eames says and thinks of Glasgow, perhaps, “knowing I’m utterly mad for being in love with you but unable to stop.”  
  
Robert laughs, guiding Eames’ arms around his waist from behind and Eames can feel the wet paint on Robert’s back brushing his bare chest. “What about the part where we are being hunted by the private security of corporate executives?”  
  
“Ah,” Eames says, “That, I could do without.”  
  
“I thought so,” Robert says and leans out of the embrace to separate the congealing mess of paint. Eames draws his fingers down Robert’s spine, counting the knots. His spine is dry, striped with small horizontal lines from the base of his skull to the end of his back, where his pajama bottoms ride low. Eames is sure this is reality, a dream could not be quite this brilliant. “How are your arms?”  
  
Robert shrugs and flexes his sun burnt biceps, “They’re alright, why? Did you want to paint on them?”  
  
“It’s alright,” Eames says and buries his nose in Robert’s hair, crisp now with cobalt blue, “I haven’t done your chest yet or thighs. Actually, I think I'll do your chest first, your thighs are quite distracting.”  
  
Robert laughs, turning to face Eames and pull him forward. He stops before their chests touch and leaves twin handprints on Eames’ chest but then smears the black and white into a swirl of gray. Robert’s hands are soft through the wet paint, guiding a steady pattern past Eames’ hip bones. Eames smiles at him, watching the paint twist into his chest hair. “What are you doing Robert?”  
  
Robert grins devilishly, “I’m showing you what it feels like when you paint on my chest.”  
  
“A great big tease?”  
  
Robert draws his nails down in a scrape over Eames’ nipples, “Precisely.”  
  
“In all fairness,” Eames says, catching Robert’s hands and turning their fingers together, “I usually use a paint brush.”  
  
“Oh yeah, like the cool touch of a soft, wet object stroking my skin is any better,” Robert scoffs.  
  
“What would you like for me to use instead?”  
  
Robert smirks, insect eyes flaring, “Your tongue?”  
  
Eames furrows his brow, “I don’t fancy eating paint, love.”  
  
“I’ll give you something else to eat,” Robert says and then laughs into the kiss Eames initiates.  
  
-  
  
Within the first week of running, bundled in a Russian cottage, Eames learned that Robert falls asleep quickest fresh from the shower. Eames watches the water drain black and gray and Robert is clean again, sharp eyes drawn low with fatigue. He half-smiles at Eames in the bathroom and says, “I don’t wish things were different.”  
  
Eames raises an eyebrow, “Even though I am a great big tease and we are being hunted by fairy-arsed corporate executives?”  
  
Robert laughs and adds, “Even though your team mindfucked me.”  
  
“Don’t say that,” Eames murmurs, looking away.  
  
“No,” Robert steps toward him, skin wet and fresh, “Hey, that’s not what this is about. I meant that I like this life, I like moving every other week with you, the paint and that crappy cello, I like it. Fischer-Marrow meant nothing to me, they were all so untouchable and I was supposed to be them, that calculating and I hated it. I mean, maybe we met under strange circumstances, but that’s in the past now.”  
  
Eames knows all of this already and so instead he dresses Robert for bed.  
  
-  
  
In Kiev, winter dawns over a shaking horizon and Eames sleeps through an earthquake. Robert sits in an armchair across the room, hands caught in a threadbare sweater, hands closed over a bottle of local vodka. Eames wakes up hours later, wakes up to Robert curled into an edge of the room with broken glass at his feet. The house is quiet and outside, people are sending their kids to school, calling insurance companies, blaring their car alarms.  
  
The world is potent after a night of dreamless sleep and Eames snaps back into consciousness far quicker than he would like. Robert watches him wake up and lifts the bottle in a mimicry of celebration. Eames only glances at the clock before he’s stretching out his arms and legs.  
  
“Don’t get up,” Robert warns.  
  
Eames casts a glance around the room and then looks back at Robert, inspecting. “What happened?”  
  
Robert lolls his head back in the chair. “There was an earthquake last night. It woke me but you slept through it.”  
  
Eames kicks the blankets back to create an empty space where Robert’s body should be. Today is the anniversary of the death of Robert’s mother. “I’m so terribly sorry to have missed it,” he says but won’t ask about the bottle. “Are you wearing shoes?”  
  
“Yes,” he says minutely.  
  
“What about vodka?”  
  
Robert holds the bottle out before him and turns it upside down, showing Eames the bottle is full and the bottle is closed. “It’s wearing me.”  
  
Eames shifts on his side and the radiator behind Robert clicks and hums to life. “Come here, sweetheart.”  
  
Robert stands slowly, long limbs unwinding into a rigid stance. The glass under his shoes crack over and over, echoing his slow steps, gaze leveled on Eames. He sits down the bottle at the bedside table with a loud thunk. Eames glances at the bottle only for an instant and sits up on his haunches to pull Robert’s shirt off. Robert watches it fall to the floor and Eames undoes his belt and his pants, pulling Robert onto the bed as the clothes fall behind him.  
  
Robert kicks his shoes off in a lazy stretch and settles back into the sheets, watching Eames. He doesn’t say a thing but doesn’t protest as Eames pulls him into a hug, into the sheets. Eames says, “How bad was the earthquake?”  
  
Robert shrugs and Eames starts kissing his shoulder blades, “Strong enough to rattle the walls, I guess. Regrettably, I don’t carry a Richter scale in my duffel.”  
  
“We’ll buy one at the airport next time,” Eames says and he’s going for light hearted but Robert doesn’t smile.  
  
“Where are we going next?” he asks and his voice cracks. Robert casts his eyes away and clears his throat, blinking rapidly.  
  
Eames rests his forehead against Robert’s temple. “Where would you like to go, my love?”  
  
“Away,” Robert says, “away.”  
  
He says that every year.  
  
-  
  
La Serena feels horrid sometimes. Robert haunts the streets at night and carries Eames home after he overindulges in poker and whiskey. Eames spends most of their time in Chile drinking too much and pretending he isn’t mourning the death of his father, who was apparently, “just a fuckin’ coward.”  
  
Eames has a few aspirin on the table beside him every morning after, aside a bottle of water and a clean towel. Robert sits on their balcony while Eames sleeps and counts the stars as they disappear with the light of dawn. Robert waits with the ancient ache inside him, sipping tea and curling his legs off the edge. Robert hates this city, the kids pick his pockets too often and Eames drinks himself into a stupor but he waits.  
  
He remembers sitting at the edge of a grave when he was eleven and thinking he could never leave. Sitting on that plane and wanting nothing more than to run. The planes and the cargo ships and the trains all take them away from bounty hunters and corporeal attachments but the sky stands. Robert hates this city but he waits for Eames to stand off the grave.  
  
The day comes, dawn isn’t even rising yet, Robert waited for it, Eames decides he shouldn’t go out that night. Out of his own volition and starved skin, he says, “I’m sick of playin’ poker with those bastards.”  
  
Robert kisses him on the mouth and says, “Where do you want to go next?”  
  
Eames cards his clean hands through Robert’s hair, “East.”  
  
He leaves the poker chip in the hands of a pickpocket.


	2. Scordatura II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Was it fun for you? Watching me chase after you with starry eyes and a broken mind? Playing me?”

Robert is waiting when Eames gets home. The dark hides him well enough, casting shadows across his shoulder blades and light spills down his cheeks when Eames flicks the lamp on. He’s holding a gun, muzzle pressed carelessly to his temple and he says, “Sit.”

“Robert,” he begins but he doesn’t know what he means to say.

Robert gestures towards the chair opposite his, “Just sit, Eames, this isn’t what you think it is.”

-

Of all places, Eames and Robert begin their relationship in a convenience store in Munich. Flown out together with a team of lawyers and executives for a business meeting, they stumble through the aisles and into each other. Eames was out for a pack of cigarettes and Robert headed down for cough syrup for the cold he felt coming on.

“Pardon,” Eames slurred, already past tipsy on the bottle of Hennessy in his hotel room.

Robert’s eyes are ringed red and he laughs at Eames, “You’re excused, Lawyer Number Eight.”

It doesn’t go exactly smooth but it ends with them splitting cough syrup and Hennessy in an empty hotel room. They fall asleep at the foot of the bed, rumpling their slacks and _Doctor Zhivago_ still playing on the television.

When dawn light crawls up, they have separate meetings to attend so Eames lets Robert out. His blue eyes are ringed an even deeper red but that’s the hangover, he says, and he smirks.

After Eames returns from work, Robert is undressed in his bed, asleep, with his phone rattling noisily on the nightstand. Eames turns both their mobiles off, shucks off his jacket, and crawls into bed beside him.

-

“What do I think it is?”

Robert rolls his eyes. “Sit down. I don’t have the time for this anymore.”

“Got plans for dinner then?” Eames sits.

“I thought about what you did, Eames.” Robert says abruptly.

“And you’ve come to kill me.”

“I believe I was talking,” Robert says and waves the gun around carelessly. “I thought about what you did because I didn’t understand. How could you—how could you _possibly_ do this to me.”

Eames’ gut twists up miserably but he keeps his face perfectly impassive. Robert isn’t paying too much attention, though, scratching at the back of his head with the barrel of the gun. “Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I know the inception wasn’t anything personal, I get that. But in Munich, did you do that on purpose? You clearly knew who I was—it took time, you infiltrated my office, more than that—and in Munich, was that some insane compulsion? Are you sick in the head?”

“No,” Eames sits forward, and he can’t keep his face from breaking into a frown. “No, I didn’t mean for it to happen, I didn’t mean for any of this.”

“You invited me to your room.”

“You came back.”

“So it’s my fault then?”

“No, of course not, that’s not what I meant.”

Robert stands and pushes the coffee table between them out of the way. “You betrayed me, Eames.” Robert pushes the barrel against Eames’ chest. “Was it fun for you? Watching me chase after you with starry eyes and a broken mind? Playing me?”

“No, Robert, please don’t say that—”

“I’ll be honest,” Robert says and straddles Eames with the muzzle pushed into his ribs. “I don’t know what to do. You betrayed me, you lied to me, you hurt me. And I want you to hurt, I want you to regret everything and split your chest open and goddamn it just—do something,” he shoves the muzzle harder into Eames’ chest.

“Robert, don’t do this,” Eames pleads and pulls Robert in by the waist, “I never meant to hurt you, I never meant to betray you or lie—”

“Why should I believe that?”

Eames sighs and touches the stubble on Robert’s chin with a gentle kiss. “For the same reason you came back to my hotel room in Munich.”

-

It’s almost four in the morning when Robert prank calls room service to bring him up a live goat for their sacrificial altar, and by then Eames’ high is wearing off. His teeth feel like plexiglass and he says, “What are we going to do if they actually bring up a goat?”

Robert looks horrified, “I’d change hotels if I were you, mate.”

Eames throws himself back on the bed in tired laughter. Robert joins him on the bed, grinning beatifically. “Y’know,” Eames says, “For a trust-fund baby, you’re alright.”

“Limited edition trust-fund baby,” Robert says and laughs, as Eames turns over and tosses an arm around Robert’s waist. Robert isn’t wearing a shirt anymore, he dropped it somewhere for some reason, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. “Have you known many of them, then, trust-fund tight asses?”

“’M one myself,” Eames murmurs in a hot whisper in Robert’s ear. “Raised on chateaus, villas, and Italian summers. _La vita e bella_ and etcetera.”

“Sounds boring,” Robert offers and turns to face him just slightly.

“I made the most of it, which wasn’t a lot but it was enough. What about you?”

Robert shrugs half-heartedly, glancing away, “Penthouses, hotel rooms, boarding schools.”

“Italian summers?”

“ _Nein_ ,” Robert replies, “ _deutschen Sommern_.”

“And your parents?” Eames says softly.

“My mother died a long time ago, my father—well, it doesn’t matter now.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

“It’s alright,” Robert says but he says it quietly enough that Eames gets the distinct impression it isn’t alright. Eames shifts Robert closer, tighter into his arms, and kisses him warmly on the mouth, a chaste pressure. Outside hotel security is knocking but on the screen, General Yefgrav Zhivago asks, “How did you come to be lost?”

-

On his lap, Robert laughs, a relieved and red rimmed smile. “I was hoping you’d say something like that,” he twists back and sets the gun on the floor and turns back to kiss Eames. This kiss is frantic and Eames cuts his lip on Robert’s teeth.

“I’m so glad you changed your mind.”

“Me too,” he smiles and steps back, “Now go pack a bag. My contract in Fischer-Morrow will follow me to hell but I stole some information for leverage and we only have two hours before they realize it’s gone. They might realize it’s blackmail and back off but they might also figure they could just kill me instead and in case of that,” he produces two plane tickets and passports from his jacket pocket, “How do you like Russia?”  



	3. Scordatura III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eames has abandoned his poker chip and looks at Robert with hesitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set after Scordatura I.

Thunder claps outside and rattles the shutters, wind slapping them against the house. Robert shuts the windows when it begins raining but it does little to muffle the noise from outside. Eames is collecting clothes in their bedroom and when Robert approaches, hands him a stack of shirts.   
  
“I think that was the last of it. Have you taken the guns and the money?”   
  
“Yeah, it’s all downstairs,” Robert says and nods towards their last minute quasi-storm shelter.   
  
Winds whipping at ninety miles per hour were forecasted earlier this week and they’ve finished collecting supplies just as the tornado siren sounds. Bangladesh isn’t the most glamorous of places but after a month of crawling through Russia’s underbelly, a steady place in Rangpur is a luxury. Inside their shelter, Robert adds the shirts to the shelves of supplies, beside the guns and above the emergency water supplies.   
  
Eames does a final count of their necessities, murmuring to himself and pointing in all directions before deeming them clear. He shuts the door and locks it with a loud clang. Robert hops on his cot and says, “It’s kind of metaphorical, isn’t it?”   
  
“What is, dove?” Eames asks, distracted with the locks.   
  
“Us, seeking shelter while a storm brings the house down.”   
  
“Huh,” Eames smirks, “I never thought of it that way, I suppose it is.”   
  
Robert smiles and kicks off his shoes, because they’ll be locked in for a while.   
  
-   
  
The next city is in Korea, a small town south of the DMZ that Robert can’t even pronounce. They eat oranges and don’t bathe for a week and whenever Eames can’t rest, can’t sleep, Robert is there. Weeks open into months and months open into years but time is forgotten between them. South Korea means oranges and the stream nearby that feels like heaven on dirty skin.   
  
Then they both come down with a stomach virus.   
  
-   
  
Eames changes phones fairly often, always disposable, always prepaid, cheap ones that can be stomped into submission or tossed into the ocean. For all the phones, however, a single person always appears in them, a ‘Maggie’. Maggie never calls when Robert can see but Eames calls her whenever he can. They make it through eight countries, post-Russia, before Robert works up the nerve to ask who she is.   
  
By that time, Eames has abandoned his poker chip and looks at Robert with hesitation.   
  
-   
  
Robert wakes up in a new city and the sun rises differently but the streets don’t matter to him anymore. Eames is asleep, gold light falling across his cheekbones and Robert thinks he’s damned them both. He slips out of bed and pulls his jeans on, collecting stray pieces of clothes as he goes and setting them aside.   
  
Eames wakes up in time to catch sight of Robert lugging a bag out the door. His body seizes in panic and he rushes after Robert in his pants, catching his shoulder in the stairwell. “What are you doing,” he blurts.   
  
Robert furrows his brows, frowning, “Laundry.”   
  
-   
  
Mombasa is another shapeless city, unceremoniously cool as fall approaches and Eames immediately perks up. He takes Robert to meet Yusuf and they drink until early morning in Yusuf’s kitchen. While Robert feeds Yusuf’s cat, Eames reclines in his chair and says, “I don’t know what I was thinking.”   
  
“Sorry, brother, but I’ll need you to clarify. To which of your life’s mistakes are you referring?” Yusuf says with a smirk.   
  
“Running from everything with a pretty boy,” Eames sighs but can’t help the clench in his chest that comes from watching the kitten purr in Robert’s hands.   
  
“Oh yeah,” Yusuf murmurs sarcastically, “You look miserable.”   
  
Robert sets the cat down and returns to them, his gait unsteady from drinking. He looms over Eames, swaying slightly, “I’m going up-bed now, to stairs.”   
  
Yusuf snorts and Eames grins at him, “Alright, need any help?”   
  
“No, thank you, I don’t need help,” Robert says, heading back towards the cat. “What I need are cats, at least four of them, in all colors of the rainbow.”   
  
“I’ll get right on it, darling,” Eames calls after him.   
  
From the top of the stairs, Robert waves one handedly, carrying the cat in his other arm and disappears. Beside him, Yusuf says, “If he thinks he’s taking my cat away—”   
  
“He’s not taking your cat, will you relax—”   
  
“It’s a very coveted animal!”   
  
“Well, not by us. What would we do with a cat? Between hotel rooms and airplanes, I mean, there’s barely space for us, let alone a fur-based animal.”   
  
Yusuf raises an eyebrow, “You could stop running.”   
  
“’Suf,” he breathes in a sigh but Yusuf is already talking over him.   
  
“It won’t be so difficult that you shouldn’t try, Eames. Your pretty boy is happy now but what happens when you get caught? Tortured to death? Buried in the Australian desert in an unmarked grave? You and I both know it can be done, then you can buy your boyfriend eighty cats and give Mags away at the altar, and both of you can move on with your lives.”   
  
“It’s not that simple, Suf — wait, what? Give Mags away? Mags is getting married?”   
  
“You didn’t know?” Yusuf says quietly, “I-I thought you knew.”   
  
“I didn’t,” Eames supplies and he’s already pulling out the phone he bought when they landed.   
  
-   
  
They wake up in Ecuador and Robert is reading a menu out-loud, and drinking a glass of orange juice from a new bodega, from a new country. There is an empty space of apartment between them, intimidated into silence after twenty-six hours on a freight ship. They had to leave their last place in a hurry and leave behind half of their already minimal possessions.   
  
Robert sets down his glass and suddenly says, “I’m sorry.”   
  
Eames left his poker chip for this life, for Robert’s eyes and his jokes, for the road and to keep them together but his gut has been itching with failure lately. In Mombasa, Yusuf leaned back in the rickety chair and said, “When is it going to be enough, Eames?”   
  
-   
  
Eames watches the rise and fall of Robert’s chest, pale and thin regardless of how much tanning or eating he does, watches his lips and how they quirk when he snores. Light falls across the slants of his ribs and Eames thinks he’s damned them both.   
  
Robert is waking up and slowly returning to his usual old money grace. He doesn’t look properly awake but he’s frowning and he asks, “Who is Maggie?”   
  
Eames’ eyes flicker but he tries his best to steady himself. He can’t gauge how much time has passed when he says, “My baby sister.”   
  
-   
  
Running was the answer when they lived in Sydney, run from everyone they hurt, run from everything they jeopardized, run from themselves, run and keep their heads down. Now, Robert is twisting impatiently inside their apartment and Eames thinks it would take a team of four mercenaries or more to take him out. Robert can shoot a gun but he only knows the basics of hand-to-hand combat and it won’t be enough. Robert won’t be enough that day, the day of Margaret’s wedding and Eames can’t think past that point, hovering and stagnant.   
  
Robert is hand-washing the dishes and sighing into a kiss and says, “We can’t do this anymore, can we?”   
  
Eames crumples beside him, clutching Robert without meaning to, “No, sweetheart, we can’t.”


	4. Scordatura IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Browning is red in the face, vein popping up over his forehead, “Enough games, Robert, it’s time to come home.”

There is a bead of sweat rolling down Robert’s spine, tickling every notch of bone as it goes. It’s almost funny to him how this is all he can focus on while there are guns pointed at him and a room full of mercenaries staring him down. He’s been running for three years now and in all that time, Uncle Peter hasn’t changed a bit.

“You couldn’t slap on a little lipstick for your favorite nephew?”

-

“Hold still, will you, goddamn,” Robert curses impatiently and slaps Eames’ hand away for the third time.

“It feels strange, what are you doing?”

“I’m spreading maggots on the wound,” Robert retorts sarcastically, “What do you think I’m doing?”

“What kind of maggots?” Eames reaches again and gets slapped again.

“Stop—they’re antibacterial maggots, they prevent infection,” Robert promises and sets the cotton swab down.

They’re in Carthage this week, getting by on emphatic gestures and running on fumes. Their bank accounts and respective trust funds are fully stocked but Robert has been wearing the same shirt for four days and they haven’t eaten in three. Between them, there is only a disposable phone left and one final package of gauze for Eames’ wound. Even the antibacterial cream is out.

When the phone rings, Eames launches himself at it with half a bandage hanging off his forehead. Robert rolls his eyes but Eames answers with a smile anyway.

-

Robert’s new apartment is the same when he gets to it. The same as every other hotel room in Russia or Bangladesh or Chile. They were all empty, they were all cold. All he’s got to fill it with are the contents of a half-empty duffel bag: three shirts, two pairs of pants, a spare pair of shoes and a Trotsky novel. Even his paint set had to be tossed in Sierra Leone.

Arthur is a professional and his suits say as much without his severe mannerisms. He gives Robert a half-hearted tour, standing in place and pointing in all directions. “Bathroom through there, bedroom that way, kitchen, hall closet, guest room, dining area. I’ve brought a few books and if you give me your size, I will bring you new clothes. I’ll bring your food once a week and Mr. Saito is perfectly willing to provide anything you may want within reason. He only asks that you keep your head down during this period.”

Robert dumps his bag on the floor, “Alcohol?”

Arthur gestures to a corner bar at the end of the living room.

Robert crosses the room, pours himself a finger of whiskey, and says, “I like you, Arthur. Quick, efficient, reliable. Were I a different man, I might hire you.”

“Were I a different man, I might accept.”

“Can you tell me where he is?”

Arthur looks completely unfazed. “No.”

-

Yusuf narrows his eyes at Eames, suspicious and asks, “What happened?”

Eames burns his fingers, lighting a cigarette. “What does it look like?”

-

He’s sweating through his shirt, running weightlessly through the crowd of shoppers and merchants in the market place, large men with illegal guns chasing after him. They’ve been sent by his Uncle Peter to put Robert down once and for all. That’s the point, though, goons tied to Peter Browning from the gun running capital of the world.

When he stands before his Uncle, he laughs, “You had to know it was a trap.”

Browning is red in the face, vein popping up over his forehead, “Enough games, Robert, it’s time to come home.”

The mercenaries that stop forward to grab him suddenly have red dots on their chests. “No, Uncle Peter,” Robert smiles, “It really fucking isn’t.”

-

“Are you going to go after him?”

It’s four in the morning in Mombasa and Yusuf reclines on the cot in his dream den, acting innocent. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you’ve got serious mental health issues,” Eames jokes, “And a history of violence.”

“One time!”

“Three!”

“One guy,” Yusuf snaps back, “It doesn’t count.”

Eames shakes his head, laughing at ‘Suf.

“Do you want me to?” Yusuf asks and Eames’ answer surprises them both.

-

“A long time ago, you took something from me. Both you and my father took from me. I didn’t know what it was for a long time but recently, I’ve been enlightened. I’ve experienced true absence now and it’s almost sick how I didn’t realize how much I was missing but I’m going to rectify that now.”

“Robert—”

“I have enough information to take your company, Uncle Peter. Your security, your power, your egotism, your wife’s lasagna recipe, and your influence. I could take the fight out of you but what’s most important is that I don’t have to take a thing.’

“You’re surrounded—”

“Am I? In the last month, your sixty has dropped a hundred and ten points, back home you’re facing allegations of insider trading, and now you tied your mercenaries to your ankles with a shiny little paper trail. My mercenaries, however, have their rifles trained on you — I’m glad you chose this warehouse, lots of windows,” Robert wriggles out of his binds and pockets his Swiss Army knife.

“Don’t shoot, boys,” he teases, “Don’t want me to start an international incident.”

“Your father—”

“Is dead,” Robert finishes. “Goodbye, Uncle Peter. Leave me alone or I’ll bury you.”

-

“May I ask a favor of you?”

“Definitely.”

“Bury him anyway.”

“Mr. Saito has asked me to inform you that burying Peter Browning was our intention all along.” Arthur smiles for the first time and Robert finds himself in fear of its edges. “Consider it done, Mr. Fischer.”

“Excellent.”

-

There is a towncar sitting outside the church Mags is married in. Parked across the street, polished and Robert stands off the hood when he notices Eames has spotted him. He smoothes a hand down his front and tries to look as composed as possible. Eames slips out of the crowd and crosses the street, eyes on Robert like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

“Hey,” Robert greets, forcing himself to sound casual.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you, I want to talk.”

“Now’s not a good time.”

“Oh,” Robert feels a burst of rejection in his chest and looks away for a moment, collecting himself. “I’ll just, uh, go then, you’re right, I shouldn’t have assumed that you would want to — anyway, your sister looks lovely, congratulate her for me. I’ll—I’ll call you.”

Robert is opening the door when Eames slams it shut and spins him by the shoulder. “No, wait, I’m sorry, that was rude.”

“It’s alright,” Robert says and turns to face him, nervous.

“What happened to your cheek?”

“My what? Oh,” Robert touches the scar self-consciously, “a, uh, a mercenary. Something of a knife fight. It was weird.”

“Mercenary?”

“Oh yeah, but I think Arthur killed that guy.”

“Yeah, I bet Arthur killed a few of those guys,” Eames teases but his eyes have lost their focus and he’s stroking Robert’s cheek with his thumb. There’s a moment of silence and then Eames is frowning and asking, “What’re you doing here, sweetheart?”

Robert feels his cheeks flush and he missed Eames so much. “I just got in the country last night, I couldn’t wait anymore, I missed you so much and I knew that if I didn’t dance at your sister’s wedding with you, you wouldn’t ever forgive me and so I came because I miss you and I love you,” Robert looks up at Eames, brushing their noses together just lightly, “I love you, okay, please don’t turn me away.”

Eames sighs and he’s so beautiful, it physically hurts. Robert turns his mouth up towards him, kissing him chastely until Eames pulls away. “I love you, I love you, but I can’t run anymore, Robert,” Eames says, “I have a life and a family and I can’t leave them again.”

“No, I’m not asking you to, I fixed it all, I fixed it. Well, Arthur and Mr. Saito fixed it, I was mostly told to look crazy and read a script.”

“Wh—how?”

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything, but please, Eames, look,” Robert fumbles with his trouser pockets, hands shaking, and produces a pair of keys, “I even got us something to show you. How would you like a real home?”

-

“Do you ever dream?” Eames asks, breath ghosting smoke over Robert’s shoulders.

Robert glances back at him, red lips quirked in a frown, “Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” Eames says, kissing his shoulder, “I don’t think I need to anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fin.


End file.
